Outdoor Adventures in the Ozarks

   Today’s plan is to drive down NC 2890 past Hiner Hole and check out the other holes farther up-river that we didn’t get to when we were here a couple weeks ago, namely Dry Ford Hole and Miss Hickman Spring Hole.  About a mile in on NC 289 0 we notice the road seems worse than last trip here, really tore-up.   We soon find the culprit; the county road grader is working on the poor road making it even worse.      We wait while he pushes some cedars up the bank on the right then he pulls off the road enough that we’re able to squeeze past.   Well, the old road down to Dry Ford Hole isn’t where the map shows, in fact we find no road at all, farther along are a couple old roads both with locked cable gates.   Oh well, with a name like ‘Dry Ford Hole’ we weren’t expecting much anyway.      Down the road about another mile at a sharp right turn is an old road to the left going down to ‘Miss Hickman’s’ which has not one but two locked gates, hmm I guess not.   We turn around and head back

     Always looking for new swimming holes, I often use Kenneth Smith’s ‘Buffalo River Handbook’ along with four different maps of the Buffalo River region, all the maps are different as far as location and existence of roads and trails.   Transposing swimming hole locations from Ken Smith’s book to the  maps, I  have ‘found’ four more possibly accessible swimming holes upriver from Pruitt.      Today we’ll hopefully find one that’s a nice peaceful place to relax on the river.   Only one map shows any roads leading back to these swimming holes, and all these holes are farther upriver  than any hole we have visited in the past.   So, hopefully we will be able to get to one having enough water to swim, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.      Travelling south on Highway 7 just north of the river before coming to the bridge is NC 2890 off to the west (right), we turn here on the paved road.   The pavement only lasts to the top of the hill where the road narrows and becomes pretty rough.   Fol

     Today is forecast to feature ‘blistering heat’ and the rest of the week is going to be even hotter.  So where do you draw the line, when is it too hot to even go swimming?  Kat is of the opinion that it’s going to be too hot today to even be outside and it’s a bad idea that we will regret.  Well,  we’re going anyway, and with the temperature already 90° at 9:00 as we’re pulling out of the driveway, it appears the weather forecasters got it right for today.      We head south on Highway 65 as the temp soars towards an eventual high today of 102°.   Before crossing the Buffalo River,  some maps show an old road going down off the highway to Lower McMahan Hole under the highway bridge at river mile 95 .  Although I slow down, we don’t see anything resembling a road just high grass and brush, we strike McMahan Hole  off the  list and continue across the bridge and into Grinders Ferry.      ‘The Swimming Hole’ also known as ‘Grinders Hole’ was the first hole we ever swam on the Buffal